SERMONS OF MCC

The Church: It's Fellowship

Now lets turn to the book of Philippians first chapter.

I want you to open your Bible , and read along with us today.

We want to look at the Word of God together, and we will be turning to some of the verses that the Lord has laid upon my heart for the message today. If you don't know what the Bible says about a church , then you may get confused along the way. All day today is going to be fellowship, we are going to be about the matter of fellowship, that will be our theme, fellowship. I will preach this morning on the church's fellowship. How to have fellowship with God.

The greatest privilege any human being can ever have is to have fellowship with God, so we will talk about that tonight in first John. But now this morning, The Church: It's Fellowship. Paul says in these verses, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now.

When Billy Graham had first begun his ministry and was attaining nation wide fame, someone attack Billy Graham and said, he setting the church back 200 years.
1an A reporter ask Mr. Graham, It is said you are setting the church back 200 years, Mr. Graham replied, what I have been trying to do is set the church back 2000 years.

And so what we are trying to do in these messages is go back to the original text, the Word of God, and see what the Bible says the church intended to be. Now when you look at the church as it is today, and see the church as it is in many places of the world, and compare it with the original , sometimes you are made to wonder, sometimes it is like the story.

I heard of the lady and her son who was sitting there at the funeral of her husband, and the man was extoling the dead father and was utilizing him just to the very heights , so about midway through, the wife punched her son and said, ''Son would you check and see if that is your daddy in the casket.'' And when we look at the church today and see what it is , and when we look at the new Testament, and see what it says it ought to be, sometimes we wonder if they're the same.

Now we are going to look today at one of the favorite church's of the apostle Paul, the church of Philippi, out of all the church's which Paul started. It seems to me, that this church was his very, very favorite. Now I think there are several reasons why this is so. I think because of the way it started it was favorite to him, some of the great conversion experiences that happened in Philippi, the wonderful way God move ...